a potpourri of Sci-Fi and Action movies

Rating: 5/10 (21 February 2007)

The main idea of the movie is quite interesting: in a not-so-far future a big company run by an unethical scientist is creating clones which in due time will be used as organs' donors for rich sponsors. In this part of the movie one can quite easily find features and ideas from other similar movies such as THX 1138, Logan's Run, Coma, even the Matrix. Anyway, what begins as a typical, nevertheless interesting dystopia comes to an end after about 45 minutes (the movie goes over 2 hours), when our heroes (two clones, played by Johansson and MacGregor) discover the truth and manage to escape the ex-military bunker where the clones' "stock farm" is. The rest is (again) typical action movie of the form: the heroes run, the bad guys pursue them. You have breathtaking car chases, our heroes hanging outside the facade of a skyscraper, etc. etc. In this case the similarities with other movies are obviously even more evident. All along the movie you have plenty of quite overt ads for companies such as Calvin Klein, MNS, Nokia, Chevrolet etc. What is most disturbing is the ending, which is highly implausible, much more than an average Sci-Fi movie could afford to be. Of course one cannot expect too much likelihood from such a movie, but there are limits a serious movie cannot trespass. The whole is nicely done, well acted, has good special effects, and can provide for 2 hours of relax if you switch off your brain and don't take too seriously what you are seeing (I mean: the story, not the topic of the movie, which is really interesting and deserves a far better handling).